Reimar kissed all the people good-bye and led the horses along the path towards the road. The stretcher started creaking and groaning at once. Then Magnína called out and asked Reimar to wait for a moment, she wanted to adjust the boy’s blanket; she came and adjusted it, and at the same time she brought out from under her apron a book wrapped in a kerchief, and slipped it under his blanket.
“It’s only The Felsenburg Stories,” she said. “I don’t enjoy them any more. You can have them. You enjoy stories so much.”
“Thank you, Magnína dear,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
She walked a few steps beside the stretcher when Reimar led the horses off again. She looked down at the path and said, “I thought I deserved a letter from you just as much as some people did. And a poem at the end.”
She could not keep up with the horses any longer because she was so heavy. She was left standing in the middle of the path, holding a corner of her apron in her hands and gazing after their parish pauper.
21
The route lay past the head of the fjord and from there up onto the mountains; the path zigzagged dizzily up the pass. All around them was the summer, a sky-blue gladness on the world all the way out over the farthest ocean; there was a glitter on the silver-white breasts of birds down by the shore, and the little mountain flowers beside the path, and the moss and the boulders; the dew was drying, smoke was beginning to rise from the farms, there were buttercups in the home-field, ewes with their lambs. An Icelandic spring morning—it was just this kind of supreme happiness that the boy had lived in his yearning dreams during the long winter nights of death; but surrounded now by all this bliss he was far from enjoying it to the full. He was extremely frightened. He thought the stretcher would topple off the horse at every bend in the path, and below lay the ravine, so deep that the river at the bottom looked like a tiny brook and the sheep on its banks no larger than toys. The creaking of the stretcher and the belly-rumbling of the newlyfed horses sounded in his ears like the fury of the elements; two years under the sloping ceiling had made him unaccustomed to sound and movement, and the slightest obstacle on the path was a dire peril. And besides, there were ravens hovering high overhead, ready to tear his eyes out. He was quite convinced he would pass away before they reached the top of the mountain.
On the other hand, Reimar did not seem to have the slightest inkling about his companion’s death throes, for he kept up a cheerful chatter to no one in particular all the way up the mountainside, when he was not urging on the horses. He had heard, you see, that the patient had a natural bent for poetry, and when the stretcher was pitching worse than ever he recited some verses about worldly pleasures, about warm flatbread, fat women, cold buttermilk, and riding horses, and asked the invalid whether he had heard that one. And by the time they had reached the brow of the mountain he had recited so much enchanting poetry that Ólafur Kárason had forgotten his imminent death and had stopped noticing the creaking of the stretcher.
“You’re not a poet yourself, are you, Reimar?” he asked finally.
“Oh, I don’t suppose there are many other poets more often on people’s lips, my friend,” said the poet Reimar. “Just ask the womenfolk of Sviðinsvík! I can admit to four whole ballad cycles by your leave, my friend—the Ballad of Memrok and Kalibab, the Ballad of Nagel and Apagitta, the Ballad of Queen Engilrad of Samsey, and the Ballad of Rokkefor and Kamenber—quite apart from all the modern poetry, like for example more than twenty marriage odes, fifty elegies (for which I never charge less than seventy-five aurar apiece), nearly two hundred love poems to girls and young men (in other people’s names), and that’s not counting all my own poetry which I composed from the heart, such as for example about adulteries in Sviðinsvík, accidents, being without tobacco, drinking sessions, and that sort of thing. Last but not least, I permit myself to mention lesser versifyings, my friend, for example verses about horses, sea journeys, and worldly pleasures; lampoons, obscene verses, children’s ditties, riddling rhymes, acrostics, and spontaneous compositions. Yes, I think I could say I’ve ridden the Muse pretty hard, my friend!”
Ólafur Kárason had not heard so much poetry for years on end, under the sloping ceiling, as he now heard on the mountainside from midmorning till midafternoon. If Reimar were asked to give the first verse of the Ballad of Memrok and Kalibab, he had no objection to carrying on until he had finished the Ballad of Rokkefor and Kamenber, and this even with the wind full in his face all the time. In a pause between ballads the younger poet took the opportunity of asking, “Don’t you find it exceedingly difficult to be a poet, Reimar?”
Reimar did not know how to answer this question; it took him completely aback, and he was nonplussed by it.
“Difficult? Me? To be a poet? Just ask the womenfolk about that, my friend, whether our Reimar finds it difficult to be a poet! It was only yesterday that I rode into the yard of one of the better farms hereabouts, and the daughter of the house was standing outside, smiling, and without more ado I addressed her with a double-rhymed, quatro-syllabic verse that just came to me as I bent down from the saddle to greet her. No, it’s not difficult to be a poet, my friend, it’s a pleasure to be a poet. It’s a question of talent, you see.”
“What do you think is needed to be a good poet?” the boy asked.
“Needed?” he echoed, and laughed. “Just ask the womenfolk that!”
But later he began to give it some further thought all the same; this side of the matter had in reality never occurred to him before.
“There are really only two things needed,” he said when he had thought enough about it, “and that is to alliterate and to rhyme. That’s the beginning and the end of all poetic art. The man who follows that rule will always be able to compose something for someone. But the man who doesn’t follow it will never be able to compose anything for anyone. To speak impromptu—anyone can do that. But to rhyme—only poets can do that. That’s the talent, if I may say so, you see. The more elaborate the better. Of course, acrostics can become a bit repetitive, I don’t deny that, and there aren’t many girls in the younger generation who can appreciate that sort of thing, but there’s no doubt about it that one can never have too much internal rhyme. And then of course it doesn’t do any harm to be able to use kennings correctly; but I have a firm rule never to use too many kennings. I only use kennings for three things—women, men, and ships; on the whole there’s no need for any more kennings than that in Iceland nowadays.”
“But what do you say, Reimar, if the poet wants to turn his thoughts to the soul and to spiritual matters?”
“Spiritual matters? The soul?” said Reimar the poet. “Do you mean elegies for the dead and suchlike?”
“No, I mean the spirit,” said the young poet, “the soul.”
“What’s all this talk about the soul, boy? The soul, that’s the pastor’s business, the girls don’t want to hear about anything like that. And you’ll soon find out, my friend, that those who make a habit of talking about the soul always mean something entirely different deep down; they just don’t dare to say it aloud. In good old Icelandic the soul just means a bag,* let me tell you, my friend, and I reckon that those who talk most about the soul would like it very much better if you put something into their bag, my friend. That’s the way I look at it, anyway.”
With that, Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík stopped asking questions; he thought of the revelation of the deity, of Sigurður Breiðfjörð and the invisible friend, and he doubted whether Reimar was as much a man of the spirit as he was famous as a poet.
22
By now they were well on their way across the plateau of the mountains. The farms had all disappeared, all the valleys were levelled out, the fjords buried in the mountains; and the mountains had merged into one another, only their tops swelling one behind the other like undulating lowlands—and far away on the other horizon, the sea. The air up there was like the two-thousand-krónur pharmacopoeia one had always longed for bu
t never been able to afford, at once cooling and exhilarating; it sent intoxicating waves through the boy’s body, he was no longer frightened. The sloping ceiling under which he had cowered for two years and from where he had been resurrected a few hours ago was now like any other past event which did not concern him at all; he was no longer the most wretched creature on earth. On the contrary he was a living participant in the ethereal joy of the mountains; he was no longer afraid of anything, not even the immortality of the soul.
“Here’s the county boundary, and now we’ll eat.”
The poet Reimar led the horses off the path into a hollow, to the side of a little mountain stream. He released the boy from the stretcher and laid him down on the moss, and the boy lay there on the moss and gazed up at the azure sky of eternity which had now become his friend again at last.
Reimar opened his knapsack with a contented look of expectation on his face, and their senses were filled with the aroma of bread and fish and cold coffee. The older poet handed the younger one a generous strip of dried fish, and as he did so he said, “Listen, it’s just occurred to me, shouldn’t we just use this opportunity and get you cured on the way?”
“Oh, that’s easier said than done, Reimar, curing me,” said the young poet.
“There’s plenty of butter in the jar here,” said Reimar.
“The illness I have is one that even doctors don’t understand at all.”
“Here’s a fine, fat piece of flank, dammit, it couldn’t have been better if it had come off old Magnína herself; yes, they must have been in high old spirits at getting rid of us this morning, these women at Fótur!”
“Oh, it’s not surprising, poor things,” said the boy. “I’ve been a terrible burden to that household all these years.”
They both ate heartily, but the horses snorted down by the stream and did not like the grazing. High above them a black-backed gull called menacingly, and that was the only sound in the unpeopled stillness of the mountain moorlands. When they had eaten their fill, Reimar offered his charge a pinch of snuff, but Ólafur declined and said it gave him a headache. Reimar wiped his clasp knife clean on his trousers and put it into his pocket.
“No, it’s no great problem, curing one little illness nowadays, I can tell you, my friend,” he said.
The invalid said then that it was not just a question of suffering from only one illness. There were many illnesses, all intertwined with one another. His skull had been broken three times, by both men and beasts. His brain was growing out into the ear at one place, and this was accompanied by the most uncontrollable headaches. In addition, his breast-bone was sticking out and there was a cyst under it, and everything had congealed into a malignant tumor—cyst, liver and pericardium. In addition to that, he had various stomach ailments and could scarcely say he had digested a single bit of food these last two years.
“That’s quite a mouthful,” said the poet Reimar.
The young poet went on and said that the district doctor had never in his whole life known of anyone so ill, and really knew of no means of dealing with so many illnesses in any one person, except perhaps by cutting him up.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Reimar. “You were lucky he didn’t get his hands on your carcass. He’s such a butcher and misanthrope that he never attends any patients unless he’s allowed to cut them up into little pieces; and I myself have seen him with my very own eyes flaying a woman alive!
“But now,” he went on, “I’ll tell you a very different story, my friend. On the other side of the mountains there’s another fjord, not a dreary fjord like the fjord to the east but a pleasant fjord. It’s fine country there, and remarkable people. On some of the farms there are the Hidden People—no, there’s no point in looking at me like that, I can’t help it, and why the devil shouldn’t Hidden People exist anyway? I’ve never known the Hidden People to do folk any harm— quite the contrary, in fact. But whether Hidden People exist or not, I don’t know of any dale or fjord in these parts which is better for women than the one to the west of these mountains we’re on at present. Or have you never heard of the cures at Kambar?”
The boy had to admit with shame that he had never heard about anything which had happened to the west of these mountains.
“Well, I never! Says he’s ill and has a soul and I don’t know what else, and hasn’t heard of órunn of Kambar, the only person in this province who dispatches cancer and peritonitis, fiends and devils, as easily as I crumple up this fishskin and toss it onto those boulders there! How does she do it? Well, you don’t know very much, my friend, I must say! The way she does it, let me tell you, is that one evening last autumn when the nights had begun to draw in, she was out walking beyond the homefield when she made contact with an elf-man beneath the crags, let me tell you, my friend. Yes, and you don’t need to go all red in the face at that, it wasn’t the sort of relationship which all sorts of riffraff and rogues imagine is the only relationship possible between people in this world and the next.
“No, this elf was an excellent fellow and a genius in word and deed, a very different sort from me and the likes of me, I can tell you, my friend. In fact it was the elf doctor, Friðrik. Since then she has met him every day, all winter and all spring, and received from him the most infallible medical advice. Some say he learned his elf medicine in his time at the Black School in Paris, and even that he’s a spirit, but I don’t really believe that. All I know is that through her, people are cured, and they’re cured by something, whatever it might be. According to what órunn herself says, he’s not entirely unlike the French captain who often came to the fjords here when she was a child, and was said to have got on very well indeed with a lot of people; but she says that Friðrik is all for Christianity, so that her mother thinks he’s perhaps Jesus Christ, but I won’t go any further into that, my friend.”
The more they talked about the Kambar girls, the more Reimar had to say in their praise and favor, but most of all about órunn and her doctor. Reimar had written to this girl no fewer than six marriage proposals in verse on behalf of respectable men of substance in different parts of the district—“And they weren’t all just talk, my friend, though I say it myself—strictly between ourselves, of course, seeing that I’m a married man with six children in Sviðinsvík. But órunn rejected all six of them, and I can vouch for that about some of them, because I myself composed her refusals to them, and there was no question of always choosing the most refined words, I can tell you, my friend; indeed I know of one man who has been completely deranged for three years because of her. Yes, she’s a glorious woman, is órunn!”
He guaranteed the boy a total cure from órunn’s Friðrik, a long and happy life, children, and descendants. But the boy was a little alarmed at the prospect of coming into the presence of so glorious a person, and felt he was too wretched and insignificant to deserve anything like that. And in addition, some religious scruples now asserted themselves. You see, deep down he was extremely apprehensive about becoming involved with supernatural forces west of these mountains. He knew the forces which reigned east of the mountains, where he had been brought up; people there had believed chiefly in God and Jesus, two related forces, both of which were thoroughly familiar to him from the Book of Sermons, the psalmbook, and so on. West of the mountains there reigned obviously different supernatural beings, powers he had not, unfortunately, had an opportunity of getting to know. And somehow or other, since Reimar had dispatched the spirit like a sheep with the staggers earlier that day, this spiritual young man no longer dared to rely blindly on man’s infallibility. At least he had to ask himself the question in all seriousness—whether it would be right to give up all hope of that reliable supernatural power with which he had been brought up on the east of the mountains, in exchange for the uncertain supernatural powers on the west side. Was it likely that God and Jesus would accept it in patience and silence if he were now to turn to Friðrik and órunn? This boy, you see, did not want to offend anybody.
At this county boundary he was once again seized by that paralyzing terror that had reigned in his breast for so long before he became ill, but which had never filled his consciousness to a greater degree, perhaps, than during those last two years when he lay helpless under the sloping ceiling: the uncertainty as to which of those two forces that battled for control of the farm he should obey, Jónas or Júst; how he should choose between those two extremely present gods when the one said “Go!” and the other “Stay!”; the one “Down here in the meadow!” and the other “Up the hill!” What punishment would Júst mete out to him if he obeyed Jónas, or Jónas, if he obeyed Júst? Which of them was right and which wrong, which good and which bad?
It also occurred to him now whether the elf doctor, Friðrik, might be the devil himself, so that each step he took towards such a creature could affect the salvation of his soul. But he did not dare to discuss such matters with a man who was so insensitive to everything spiritual as Reimar was. When all was said and done, however, there was no one to say that these newly discovered supernatural powers west of the mountains might not be stronger than the familiar powers to the east. In reality one never knows what supernatural power will conquer in the end, so it probably is more sensible to believe in them all, or at least to show them all the same politeness, in the hope that one or the other of them will prevail in the end and will reward neutrality and courtesy. And on these grounds the boy agreed in a whisper to put his fate in the hands of Friðrik and órunn, in the hope that it was God’s will that he should be cured in Jesus’ name. It was actually uniting east and west, meadow and hill, and wiping out all county boundaries—and he hoped that with such an inoffensive declaration he would not offend anyone.
World Light Page 14
